Yeah, they really need to stop doing weird side-buffs. They admit Elemental is in a bad place, give them Shamanistic Rage no strings attached. Admit Ret is in bad spot, proceed to try to rework things oddly and take away things like snares in order to buff. I appreciate the 2 minute wings, but honestly our 4 set was one of the few deterrences to training the Ret.

Yeah, out of all the changes the only straight buff is Glyph of Templar's Verdict. Even the Hand of Sacrifice change makes you pick between dispelling a healer out of a sheep or using it to save someone, or using it to break CC on yourself by sharing damage with someone. Like I said previously, I have never seen such a stingy wave of "buffs" in 6+ years of playing this game. They admit the spec has serious issues, but they can't find it in their heart to actually dish out an absolute buff with no drawbacks. I hope they keep this up because sometimes you have to hit rock-bottom to see changes.

These half-assed tweaks will lead to another terrible season for Ret, especially with Windwalkers pushing us out of any serious consideration in any PvP environment, hopefully all this leads to a massive public outcry and serious embarrassment for the developers; they are completely delusional about where Ret is right now, and how much help it really needs, especially in relation to the buffs to rogues and windwalkers (and the already strong state of DKs and Warriors). Not only did Ret get jack squat in 5.2, but our main competitors got a lot a well. The developers need a serious wake-up call, and they will probably just have to ruin the spec completely before they stop being so absurd and ridiculous.

Yeah, they really need to stop doing weird side-buffs. They admit Elemental is in a bad place, give them Shamanistic Rage no strings attached. Admit Ret is in bad spot, proceed to try to rework things oddly and take away things like snares in order to buff. I appreciate the 2 minute wings, but honestly our 4 set was one of the few deterrences to training the Ret.

Then they should just make it baseline for Ret. If they have to, increase the ICD a bit. Simplest way to do it.

I don't know if I should post my idea up on the PTR class balance issues thread now (not knowing if it'll even be read) or on Monday.

I detest the title of this thread since the OP is clearly not being sarcastic.

He's (GC) not even remotely close to fixing Ret PvP. They are as clueless now about it as they were almost a year ago when Ret got barely any time at the very end before they pushed MoP out the door. Any Ret PvP'r worth his salt goes with Divine Purpose out side of specific builds, and because of that, the current 4 pc bonus is fantastic.

If their intent is to remove that and supplant it with a 1 min reduction on Wings, WHICH SHOULD BE A HARD-CODED SKILL BALANCE NOT BALANCED FROM EQUIPMENT, then that is a large hit to Ret's flexibility as it currently stands and continues to show their ignorance about the spec.

For those who don't know, the current status of SoJ on PTR is as follows:

Justice
The attacking Paladin's next Templar's Verdict striking this target will also deal 25% weapon damage as Holy per application of justice. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 20 sec.

The above is just another example of their lack of awareness on what Ret needs. Oh and I've been on the PTR forums telling them, and I'll continue to do so regardless of their lack of involvement in said discussions. Clearly they prefer to spend more time responding to irate and equally ignorant individuals on the forums, especially the EU forums, thereby indirectly supporting said posting behavior, instead of responding to civil individuals giving legitimate and insightful feedback.

EDIT: Yes I'm irritated. Especially since I started recently PvP'n on my 90 arms warrior and compared it to ret. The difference in power levels is staggering. It is a joke, a FRIGGING JOKE. Any arms warrior claiming 'skill' is full of crap. It takes nothing to own as one currently. In fact, if one ever dies to a ret, they officially suck. I take out Rets in Mal gear while still in contender and dread and still 8 slots of pve gear and a heroic dungeon weapon. WHAT A JOKE!

Buff the crap out of our mastery damage but make it a dot that ticks for 5 seconds, makes sustained dps higher in pve and preassure higher in pvp.
Or make censure a 5 sec duration but buff the shit out of it, make it almost impossible to keep up in pvp (unless you're nuking) and for pve you could make censure a "one mob" thing and then buff seal of the righteouss aoe capabilities again. Buffing any abilities to rets is alot harder I think since our secondary stats has a big impact on them and mastery will cause "burst" issues in pvp if they increase base mastery damage or base damage scaling/damage.

I detest the title of this thread since the OP is clearly not being sarcastic.

He's (GC) not even remotely close to fixing Ret PvP. They are as clueless now about it as they were almost a year ago when Ret got barely any time at the very end before they pushed MoP out the door. Any Ret PvP'r worth his salt goes with Divine Purpose out side of specific builds, and because of that, the current 4 pc bonus is fantastic.

If their intent is to remove that and supplant it with a 1 min reduction on Wings, WHICH SHOULD BE A HARD-CODED SKILL BALANCE NOT BALANCED FROM EQUIPMENT, then that is a large hit to Ret's flexibility as it currently stands and continues to show their ignorance about the spec.

For those who don't know, the current status of SoJ on PTR is as follows:

The above is just another example of their lack of awareness on what Ret needs. Oh and I've been on the PTR forums telling them, and I'll continue to do so regardless of their lack of involvement in said discussions. Clearly they prefer to spend more time responding to irate and equally ignorant individuals on the forums, especially the EU forums, thereby indirectly supporting said posting behavior, instead of responding to civil individuals giving legitimate and insightful feedback.

EDIT: Yes I'm irritated. Especially since I started recently PvP'n on my 90 arms warrior and compared it to ret. The difference in power levels is staggering. It is a joke, a FRIGGING JOKE. Any arms warrior claiming 'skill' is full of crap. It takes nothing to own as one currently. In fact, if one ever dies to a ret, they officially suck. I take out Rets in Mal gear while still in contender and dread and still 8 slots of pve gear and a heroic dungeon weapon. WHAT A JOKE!

Luckily that change was reverted and they are considering a flat buff to 5.1 SoJ.

But about your edit: yes, I agree with this. Last night did some 2's on my feral with my arena partner on his alt warrior who has like 458 pvp gear item level and he was out-damaging people who were much more geared than we were. Arms is pretty sick right now and the only nerfs it is receiving, quite frankly, are necessary. (How the hell is an aoe 20 second cooldown stun fair? No other class gets stun durations that long without using resources) and Defensive Stance should never have been 25%.

Either way, Ret really isn't going to have a good season next patch unless the dps number tweaking really gives us a huge upgrade. Other than that, Ret really just isn't a good dps class utility-wise. Why take a Ret when Frost mages have burst in deep, and CC from Deep, Poly, Ring of Frost, and Counterspell? Why take them when Unholy has insane pressure from necrotic and pet damage? Why take them when Rogues can shut people down and do good damage when on-target? Why take them when an arms warrior is harder to kill and does more sustained damage, and has just as potent of cooldowns (skull banner is arguably stronger than anything other melees have). Why take the Ret when monks have an aoe stun, stronger offhealing (this may change) and more CC, coupled with a much shorter cooldown dps increase to match their high sustained?

It's pretty frustrating, honestly, and I hate to reroll to try and get a good arena season in, but its getting to the point that my paladin isn't that fun anymore, I'm having more fun as Holy than Ret and I've usually only gone Holy when I really needed to.

I think they still want to buff Rets damage outside of Cd's. I mean he quite cleary said,

"We still like the goal of giving Ret more damage outside of their long cooldowns, but Censure just brings a lot of benefits that are going to be hard to reproduce in any kind of "build up to burst" mechanic."

I think they still want to buff Rets damage outside of Cd's. I mean he quite cleary said,

"We still like the goal of giving Ret more damage outside of their long cooldowns, but Censure just brings a lot of benefits that are going to be hard to reproduce in any kind of "build up to burst" mechanic."

Now the question is how they are doing to do that.

They need to stop being afraid to nerf cooldowns/rework talents for Ret. That's how. Look at druids, priests. Their talents all change based on spec... Sanctified Wrath is really the only paladin one that does. Look at Frost DK's. They have a single cooldown, why can't we have 2 and buff our sustained? Make GoAK do something Utility-wise for Ret.

I think they still want to buff Rets damage outside of Cd's. I mean he quite cleary said,

"We still like the goal of giving Ret more damage outside of their long cooldowns, but Censure just brings a lot of benefits that are going to be hard to reproduce in any kind of "build up to burst" mechanic."

Now the question is how they are doing to do that.

It's a couple of weeks until 5.2. Given that their Ret design was flawed to begin with (See 5.1 Ret in PvP), or their bigger changes/solutions backtracked upon (Seal of Justice), i'm honestly just considering waiting until the next expansion.

Of all the specs, Ret is probably one that has been consistently changed to a greater degree than other specs/classes; and not often to good effect. I honestly wish they'd figure our what they want to do with it.

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1." - Cranmer's Law

They need to stop being afraid to nerf cooldowns/rework talents for Ret. That's how. Look at druids, priests. Their talents all change based on spec... Sanctified Wrath is really the only paladin one that does. Look at Frost DK's. They have a single cooldown, why can't we have 2 and buff our sustained? Make GoAK do something Utility-wise for Ret.

I mean a semi easy solution would be to nerf the damage bonus of Holy Avenger by 15% but increase the damage of all Holy power generators by 15%. That way we get better sustained damage and our burst under Cd's stay relatively the same. I think Hammer of Wrath needs to hit a lot harder on targets that are under 20% health aswell.

Another thing they could do is buff Sword of Light to increase our damage with 2handed weapons by 20% up from 10%.

Meh, typical Blizzard. Waste all dev time trying to fix something that was never broken to begin with, address zero real issues with Retribution.

Agreed, what little development time they allotted for Ret for 5.2 was wasted on a version of SoJ that was so flawed that any half-competent theory crafter could see was doomed to fail. And now that they ran out of time and we get this change to our 4pc which is equally flawed and makes the problem they are trying to fix worse. Now we no longer have the Holy Power from our old 4pc to help us stay semi-potent between cooldowns... and our burst is even higher since we can line up AW and HA every time.

We're worried that we're not going to be able to get the new Seal of Justice on PTR in a good place. We still like the goal of giving Ret more damage outside of their long cooldowns, but Censure just brings a lot of benefits that are going to be hard to reproduce in any kind of "build up to burst" mechanic. When faced with decisions like these where the new design isn't a clear win, we think the right decision is to revert the change. It's possible we could buff Seal of Justice (the 5.1 version) to 20% damage from 16% damage, but overall it would still probably not get much use in PvP.
However, we haven't given up on the idea of solving Ret's problems of long cooldowns. We are going to try changing the 4pc PvP set bonus to lowering the cooldown on Avenging Wrath by 1 min. This is a set bonus that has worked out pretty well in PvE and would help Ret keep up pressure more frequently without getting to the point of one-shot abilities.

So, the devs confess the problem of the dps irregularity yet their response is to truncate the AW cd only for pvp environment.
So, I have 3 questions:
1) Is the thread title misleading or ironic?
2)Do the devs actually read what they officially post?
3) IS IT THAT HARD to just buff a couple of passive abilities by 4-5%?

You guys seems to be thinking I'm ironic here but then I think you're the optimistic ones. Ret has been SO fkd up SO MANY TIMES the last years and even more if you compare with other specs.

If Ret does not get nerfed we're already getting buffed, since GC main objective is to make Rets unplayable and therefore Vanguards is his nemesis... whatever.

Really, if Ret get ANY buff is like the end of the world. If Blizzard tries to make Ret playable is like maybe WoW is comming to the end.

OF COURSE they will fail, since is GC after all. There is LOTS of good ideas to fix Ret as a competitive spec for PVP and they are to lazy to do it, is not like Ret is a Rogue or a Monk. But if you look at Ret 5.0 and 5.1 then on 5.2 we have lots of reason to CELEBRATE.

Is like we move arround in a rusty weelchair and they will NEVER let us walk, not even dream to run like other specs, but if we get some oil for the wheels so we are at least decent as cripples: YEY!

"I notice my rating actually boosts when I remember to have fun. Playing competitively while also enjoying yourself and focussing on having good games instead of getting rating is way more important.
After 2.2k the fun devolves into a twisted realm suffering and despair and you will quit pvp from extreme traumatic stress and you will probably xfer to Moon Guard and join some Belf rp guild and become a prostitute in Silvermoon."by Clukclukbewm

We're worried that we're not going to be able to get the new Seal of Justice on PTR in a good place. We still like the goal of giving Ret more damage outside of their long cooldowns, but Censure just brings a lot of benefits that are going to be hard to reproduce in any kind of "build up to burst" mechanic. When faced with decisions like these where the new design isn't a clear win, we think the right decision is to revert the change. It's possible we could buff Seal of Justice (the 5.1 version) to 20% damage from 16% damage, but overall it would still probably not get much use in PvP.
However, we haven't given up on the idea of solving Ret's problems of long cooldowns. We are going to try changing the 4pc PvP set bonus to lowering the cooldown on Avenging Wrath by 1 min. This is a set bonus that has worked out pretty well in PvE and would help Ret keep up pressure more frequently without getting to the point of one-shot abilities.

So, the devs confess the problem of the dps irregularity yet their response is to truncate the AW cd only for pvp environment.
So, I have 3 questions:
1) Is the thread title misleading or ironic?
2)Do the devs actually read what they officially post?
3) IS IT THAT HARD to just buff a couple of passive abilities by 4-5%?

There are so many ways to fix the problem that its not even funny. But, there are several things blocking their thought process:

1) They live in some fantasy lala-land where Ret burst is anything special.
2) In this same fantasy land Paladin defensive cooldowns are anything special.

Example: on my Ret when my partner is getting trained by a Warrior I can use HoP to give him 10 sec of physical immunity (2 sec in a little place called reality due to Shattering Throw) I can then use HoS to transfer some damage, leaving both my partner and I at low health. I can also toss out some heals and then have no HP to use TV, thus my pressure goes to crap and the warrior has to use no defensive abilities what so ever because his health is so high. I can also use my main DISPELLABLE CCs on very long cooldowns to give my friend some more breathing room.

After the patch: replace leg sweep with a 8 sec disarm/and auto attack-stopper from Ring of Peace that cannot be reduced by a weapon chain or the warrior pvp set bonus, and I will be able to Nibble Brew if the warrior fears me off.

Yeah defensive class my butt. Any melee I can think of can defend a partner better.